Agency: 23,000 Ponzi schemes on YouTube

The Better Business Bureau warned Wednesday about a proliferation of what appear to be Ponzi schemes on YouTube.

The agency has identified nearly 23,000 of these videos -- usually promoting "cash gifting" or "gifting club" programs -- that have received nearly 60 million views.

"They make it seem like it's legal and an easy way to make money, but it's nothing more than a pyramid scheme," Better Business Bureau spokeswoman Alison Southwick said.

The videos usually don't ask for money directly, but send viewers to Web sites where they are urged to sign up for the "gifting program," usually for fees ranging from $150 to $5,000.

Ponzi scams, also known as pyramid schemes, depend on getting an ever larger number of people to invest with promises that all will reap the rewards. It was the same mechanism used by disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, except his fraud totaled $65 billion.

One of the videos added Wednesday on YouTube featured Bible quotes, pictures of stacks of money and a testimonial from a man who said he not only got rich from cash gifting but also found true happiness and lost 35 pounds.

Some of the videos claim that because it's "gifting," it's somehow legal.

"They talk about 'cash leveraging,' whatever that means, and other vague marketing talk," Southwick said. But the basic scheme is that participants are told to recruit more people who will put in more money, and so on.

"It's just money changing hands," she said, "and it always goes to people at the top of the pyramid."